HANOI

When the World Cup kicks off in Germany on Friday, millions of Vietnamese fans will combine two national passions — football and betting. Bars screening the matches, many of them after midnight, are tripling their beer and food stocks, anticipating a sustained, enthusiastic and noisy onslaught in one of the world’s most football-crazed nations.

Three people were arrested in Vietnam for trafficking fake -million bills although the largest number on the real thing is , a newspaper reported on Monday. The counterfeiting ring was uncovered by police in Tay Ninh province, according to the Thanh Nien, [Youth], newspaper.

Disgraced British glam rocker Gary Glitter goes on trial in Vietnam on Thursday charged with committing obscene acts with young girls in a case that could see the faded star sentenced to up to seven years in jail. The 61-year-old former showman is expected to plead not guilty when he appears in court in southern Vietnam.

Vietnamese prosecutors have recommended that former British rock star Gary Glitter stand trial for committing obscene acts with children, officials said on Friday. Glitter previously served prison time in Britain after being found with a massive collection of child pornography.

The death toll from floods that have devastated central Vietnam over the past week climbed to 61 as a remote mountain province counted its dead, officials said on Wednesday. In another province close to the coast, three major landslides have again cut off Highway 1, the main north-south artery.

Disgraced 1970s glam rock star Gary Glitter has been arrested trying to flee Vietnam for Thailand and is accused of having sex with underage girls, Vietnamese police and state media said on Sunday. ”He was arrested on Saturday in Ho Chi Minh City,” said a police officer in Vung Tau city, 100km east of the southern Vietnamese business hub.

Vietnam is concerned over reports that disgraced 1970s rocker Gary Glitter is living in the country with a juvenile and is ”working very hard” to track him down, an official spokesperson said on Thursday. British tabloids reported earlier this week that Glitter was living in a seafront villa in Vung Tau with a 15-year-old girl but was now on the run.

Eighteen people, including three children, are confirmed dead and two are missing after Typhoon Kai Tak battered central Vietnam, officials said on Thursday. ”The typhoon weakened into a tropical depression after battering the central coastal regions,” a flood and storm committee spokesperson said.

Authorities have identified 24 of the 51 people who were killed this week in flash floods in northern Vietnam, officials said on Thursday. The total number of fatalities from flash flooding that came on the tail end of Typhoon Damrey is still unknown because some areas remain cut off, an official from Yen Bai province said.

Typhoon Damrey’s destructive rampage through Vietnam left 33 people dead as heavy rains triggered flash flooding and landslides in its wake, officials said on Wednesday. The storm, the worst to hit Vietnam in a decade, weakened as it pushed further into Laos on Wednesday.

Up to 15km of a protective dyke have been destroyed by Typhoon Damrey in the two provinces in northern Vietnam hardest-hit by the storm, local officials said on Tuesday afternoon. Tens of thousands of houses in Thanh Hoa and Nam Dinh have also reportedly been destroyed, and in China the storm killed at leatst 16 people.

After 35 years in the safekeeping of a United States war veteran, the diary of a Vietnamese army doctor has hit bookstores in Vietnam and become an instant bestseller with its unusually personal take on war. A warts and all portrayal of the horrors of war or of intrigues in the trenches it is not.

Vietnam is attempting to further tighten control on the internet with a new government decree that comes into effect at the end of July, state-run media reported on Friday. Control measures introduced last year have been widely ignored, and government ministries are attempting to implement new rules governing access to the internet.

Vietnamese authorities have banned gold being added to food, after a restaurant in Hanoi served gilded dishes it said had enhanced nutritional value, state media said on Saturday. Since January, the Kim Ngan Ngu Thien, or ”Golden Feast” restaurant, had been serving meals mixed with gold dust.

Five people were arrested in Vietnam after police stopped a bus carrying nearly half a tonne of endangered animals and animal parts, local police said on Monday. Traffic police in Nghe An province stopped a 24-seat passenger bus on Wednesday and found 14kg of bear paws, 227kg of live turtles, 44kg of live pythons, 12kg of stag antlers, and 100kg of unidentified animal bones.

Nguyen Quoc Nam Anh from southern Vietnam has confounded English examiners by passing a university-level English proficiency test, at the age of eight. Anh scored 550 out of a maximum 660 points in the Test Of English as a Foreign Language, according to Nguyen Thai Binh Long, office manager at the Foreign Language Centre of Vietnam National University, where the girl took the test.

The World Bank has offered Vietnam a -million loan to help its poultry industry recover from the devastating bird-flu crisis, bank officials said on Friday. ”We have discussed it internally and have mobilised resources to that amount, should the Vietnamese government accept it,” said a World Bank representative in Vietnam.

A Thai health official warned on Monday that authorities must prepare for an expected second onslaught of bird flu, as Vietnam reported the region’s 19th fatality from the virus that has ravaged poultry farms across Asia. The World Health Organisation, meanwhile, said China may already have human cases of bird flu.

Pigs in Vietnam have tested positive for the bird-flu virus that has infected millions of chickens and ducks across Asia and killed 18 people, the United Nations’ Food and Agricultural Organisation said on Friday. However, some experts cautioned the tests were not conclusive and that it was too early to start talking about culling swine.

Two more fatalities in Vietnam lifted the death toll from the bird flu outbreak to 15 on Wednesday as the World Health Organisation (WHO) said the disease is spreading so quickly that no part of Asia was safe. The warning came as a leading United States medical expert said China probably already has human cases of bird flu.

The World Health Organisation said on Monday it is rushing gowns and masks to Vietnam to prevent further transmission of bird flu to humans, as it struggles to gauge the scope of infection across the country. The H5N1 strain of avian influenza has killed at least six people in Vietnam.

Fears over Asia’s bird flu crisis worsened on Wednesday as worst-hit Vietnam admitted that nearly 900 000 chickens possibly exposed to the deadly virus were sold to the public, and international health experts scrambled to find a vaccine. The avian influenza ravaging poultry farms in Asia has killed five people.

The World Health Organisation confirmed on Saturday that a fourth person has died from bird flu in Vietnam and warned that a growing number of people are falling sick with respiratory illnesses. The outbreak has sparked an Asia-wide health scare and Vietnam has ordered the slaughter of more chickens.

A bird flu outbreak that has sickened nearly 600 000 chickens in Vietnam is suspected of being linked to the deaths of 10 children and an adult in Hanoi, the World Health Organisation said on Monday. Viruses in both the chickens and the people appear to be similar — but further testing is being done.

Agriculture officials met on Wednesday to work out measures to contain transmission of a mystery virus that has killed as many as 60 000 chickens in Vietnam. The disease emerged last week in the southern provinces but has now spread to other Mekong Delta provinces and Ho Chi Minh City as a result of panic selling.

A rare Golden Langur has been born in captivity for the first time in Vietnam, increasing by one the population of arguably the most-endangered monkey on earth, environmentalists said on Friday.

Conservationists are calling for urgent action to prevent the extinction of the world’s most endangered primate, after 26 eastern black crested gibbons were discovered last month in Vietnam.

The remains of four oryx-like endangered animals have been discovered by international wildlife experts in Vietnam, raising fears that the species, unique to Indochina, could soon become extinct.